Linklaters’ Indian ally boosts partnership with internal promotion

Linklaters’ Indian best friend Talwar Thakore & Associates (TTA) has promoted banking and finance managing associate Sonali Mahapatra to its partnership to take its partner headcount back up to six.

Mahapatra joined TTA in 2009 after a three-year stint with Linklaters and will become a partner on 1 April. She graduated from NLSIU Bangalore in 2001, beginning her career at Amarchand Mangaldas.

TTA partner Narayan Iyer, who previously worked with Mahapatra in Linklaters’ Singapore office, said she had substantial banking and finance experience.

Mahapatra said that as a partner she and Iyer would try to strengthen domestic relationships with international bank clients who did work or had branches in India, to advise them on cross-border lending.

She added that finance work was currently “up and down” but overall going well. “There are quite a few people in the market who are looking to raise finance and there are quite a few structured deals. The plain vanilla stuff goes on but there’s not that much for lawyers to do there,” she added.

Iyer said that after Mahapatra’s election the firm now had six partners and 16 associates.

This is a leverage of 2.6 associates per partner. Iyer explained that the idea was to eventually get the leverage similar to Linklaters’ average, which is around 4.5 fee-earners per partner.